A word from our Voter

Dear Diary,

I’ve been in Army Basic Training for 10 weeks this Fall, and just recently graduated and moved into AIT-- Accurately Imitating Travis. For the next 9 weeks, my comrades and I will be Awesomely Imitating Travis as we learn how to operate heavy equipment. Here are a few highlights of my training so far:

9.1.10 First day of training. I did a few pushups, ate 3 square meals and one rounded snack.

10.17.10 Today while building a barbed-wire fence along the Texas/Louisiana border, my comrade Roger Hartman made a few mistakes. 1) He danced an Irish Jig on Texas soil, which is a severe disgrace to the Alamo and all who fought there. 2) He intentionally crossed the national boundary into Louisiana. This violates several Federal treaties. 3) He wrapped poor Adam up in barbed-wire as if he were a Christmas tree and barbed-wire was strings of popcorn. I now know what a barbed-wire Christmas Human looks like.

10.25.10 We did our first jump today from a C-130 Transport. I like sky-diving! The only difficult part was shooting practice during free-fall. We were all given paintball guns and ordered to shoot each other as many times as possible on the way down. Whomever reached the ground with the least amount of paint would win the contest. Once our parachutes opened, a severe aerial paint war ensued. It was difficult to adjust to warfare in an environment with not only left and right, forward and backward but also up and down. Recruit Thompson won the contest. He was hit a total of zero times because he forgot his parachute.

10.31.10. Halloween Dinner. We had just come in from firing anti-tank missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and PFC Roger Hartman. The juice wasn’t ready, so the chef had me and Rolly go out back and drive a tank over a few pumpkins.

11.9.10 Today we finally got around to flying airplanes and helicopters. They let us loose on the airfield and we could practice on whatever we wanted. Lots of people fought over the fighter jets, but I went straight for the Space Shuttle. I liked the lift-off a lot, but found that landing it was very difficult, especially with all the fighter jets and helicopters flying around, and for some inane reason they scheduled another group to have their aerial paint fight that day, so the skies were a bit congested.

11.15.10 I graduated yesterday and moved on to heavy equipment operating. Don’t be fooled. This equipment is HEAVY.

Here's a video of some driving I did yesterday:



Time for lights out.
Till next time,

The Voter
-Moving heavy equipment like Sgt. Oaks